She was driven and she was focussed, both qualities he’d never looked for in a lover before. Qualities, if he was honest, that he’d gone out of his way to avoid. Sex was simple, but cerebral attraction was a complication he could do without. And there was no doubt he found Alex Vardy utterly desirable; physically and otherwise.
As if sensing his scrutiny, she lifted her eyes, a scowl knitting her forehead. When she pursed her mouth he was helpless from imagining dragging his thumb over that plump lower lip, dipping his head to taste the sweet heat of her mouth, pulling her body close against his. It was nonsensical. And pathetic. And it made him feel like the kind of hormone-ravaged teenager lusting over the hottest girl in school he’d never been.
Yet here he was. Imagining.
‘Do you have to look at me in quite that way?’ she grumbled suddenly.
‘Sorry?’ He flashed her the slow, easy smile that women never failed to respond to.
Alex, however, appeared less than impressed.
‘That way.’ She waved her hand abstractedly in the air towards him. ‘As though I’m some kind of puzzle box and you’re trying to work me out.’
Another little nugget of information about her that he found himself seizing upon.
‘You enjoy puzzle boxes?’ He swirled the wine around his glass. Experience told him the act in itself was enough to convince the casual observer he was drinking it.
‘As it happens, yes,’ she fired back. ‘Though I’ve no doubt they would be considered too geeky for someone who prefers the kind of X-rated pursuits that you do.’
‘I wouldn’t write me off so quickly. You clearly have no idea how attractive geeky can be.’
‘Right.’ Had she really rolled her eyes at him? ‘Because you’re well known for your attraction to geeky women.’
The laugh rumbled low in his stomach. He loved these flashes of her feistier side, made him hungry to learn more. And that fact alone should bother him more than it did.
‘I think the fact that you like puzzle boxes makes you all the more—what shall we say?—interesting.’ His scrutiny deepened. ‘Do you have a collection or something?’
She smoothed out the frown before it could crease her face, careful to keep her tone level.
‘By the way, are you actually planning on drinking any wine? Or do you think by swirling it around the glass every now and then that I’m going to believe I’m not drinking alone?’
The corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily.
‘I’m impressed. Most people wouldn’t have noticed that fact.’
‘I’m not most people.’
‘No. You aren’t.’ He dipped his head to the side, relishing the stain that spread across her cheeks.
‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’
She was going for nonchalance but was clearly unpractised. Without her scrappy side, her innocence was even more endearing. Louis grinned.
‘You know it is.’
A silence descended over their table and, while he was content just to watch her and assess, after a few moments Alex shifted awkwardly, glancing around the room. All about them couples were talking in low voices, laughing together, even cuddling in their booth-style seats. If the whole idea was that the press saw them together and began to wonder, surely the only question on their lips would be if they were even there together in the first instance?
‘Shouldn’t we be...doing something? Generating interest?’
Another wicked grin cracked his face. Why was it that she was so deliciously easy to bait?
‘Nice to see you’re suddenly so keen. What do you suggest, then? Rampant sex underneath the table? The tabloids would go frantic for the chance to squeal to the world that I indulge my insatiable sexual needs in restaurants the length and breadth of the country.’
She pulled a face.
‘Just the country? Surely you’re ambitious enough to take on the world?’
Was it perverse that he got such a kick out of the fact she never seemed to let him get away with a thing? He dropped his voice to something approaching intimate, and leaned forward across the table to take her hand.